


Wait

by Karasuno Volleygays (ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor)



Series: Valentine's Kisses 2019 [24]
Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: High School Third Years, Illness Relapse, M/M, Sickfic, fear and angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 16:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17532194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor/pseuds/Karasuno%20Volleygays
Summary: He always knew it could happen and he tried to be ready, but nothing could prepare Sanada for watching Yukimura's illness flare back to life and rattle his entire world.





	Wait

This was never supposed to happen. 

Angry fingers raked through hair, pulling on the strands roughly because pain of his own was the least he could do to distract him from the ache in his chest. His heart felt like it was going to explode in his ribcage, and he didn’t know what to do with the rest of himself.

Sanada had thought they were both done with anxious treks in hospital waiting rooms, but here he was yet again. On the outside looking in, waiting for some nameless white coat to tell him if Yukimura was going to live or die, and oh, he hated it so much.

The first time it happened, it was the worst day of Sanada’s life, but it was so much worse when love was in the equation.

Memories of the return were burned into his brain forever.

 

♚ ♚ ♚

 

The halls of Rikkaidai High School rang with the chatter of its thousand or so students as they shifted to their next classes. Sanada held his books in one arm while his spare hand flipped through a text message on his phone he couldn’t figure out what it said to save his life. 

He really wished Kirihara would just stick to Japanese, rather than these cryptic emoji dialects and vague abbreviations.

He nearly dropped his phone when a loud slap sounded right next to him. Glancing over, he saw Yukimura crouched on the floor, gathering his books that he seemed to have dropped. 

A knot of anxiety starting tingling in Sanada’s belly. Yukimura Seiichi was not a careless person. The last time he had dropped anything accidentally was back in the early part of their third year of middle school. That had been the ominous herald of a much larger problem. All texts he could round up at every library in a ten kilometer radius said that Guillain Barré Syndrome would likely never relapse.

‘Likely’ did not mean ‘never’.

Sanada sank to his knees next to Yukimura and eyed him closely. “Do you need to go to the nurse’s office?”

Yukimura shook his head and chuckled. “I dropped my books, Genichirou. I would hardly call it an emergency.”

“Yet.” Sanada’s jaw clenched as he bit back the urge to lecture Yukimura on the very real possibility that the illness he had barely survived a few years ago could very well return. Instead, he offered a quiet, “Let me carry those. We’re going to the same place.”

“I will not.” Burden well in hand, Yukimura stood and resumed his trek for the stairs, which led down to the science lab. 

Sanada was quick to his feet to follow, and he willed his overactive imagination to rest. Yukimura was right; people dropped their stuff all the time. In fact, there was a spindly first year in the corner near the stairs shoveling his own pile of books splayed out on the floor. 

He would remain vigilant, however. Not being sure whether his tennis captain and long-time friend would live still haunted Sanada. He couldn’t imagine how he would cope with the situation when Yukimura was his significant other.

With a quick jog and a couple of stern glares to shoo passers-by out of his way, Sanada caught back up with Yukimura again. 

They were halfway down the flight of stairs leading from the second floor to the ground level science wing when it happened. Yukimura’s books spilled out of his grasp once again.

“No, no, no, no,” he murmured under his breath.

Sanada’s arm shot out on instinct, but he was a fraction of a second too late. Yukimura’s legs buckled beneath him and sent him tumbling down the stairs.

Long legs took steps two at a time, and Sanada hurled himself to the floor next to Yukimura to check everything his panicked brain could think of. His pulse was weak and erratic, but there. A quick inspection of Yukimura’s scalp yielded no signs of blood. His breath, however, was shallow and gasping. It was everything he was afraid of and more, and there had been nothing he could do but watch it happen. 

Sanada gathered Yukimura’s limp form into his arms and started to run. The nearest office was the administration wing, where he made a beeline. Most everyone stepped out of the way of a large, crazy-looking third year bulldozing through the hallway, and the rest were roughly shouldered out of the way. 

Kicking open the office door of the visitor check-in desk, Sanada barked, “Call an ambulance!” When the stunned secretary stared at him in shock, he snapped, “Now!”

While she frantically dialed, stammering the school’s address, Sanada eased Yukimura down onto a nearby couch. Folding one of Yukimura’s trembling hands in his, Sanada forced himself to breathe. 

“Genichirou,” Yukimura wheezed, trying and failing to squeeze Sanada’s hand with his own. “Remind me to listen to you more.”

Choking on the knot that felt like a fist in his throat, Sanada nodded because words couldn’t find their way out. Yukimura tried to smile, but his face pinched in pain and he squeezed his eyes shut while struggling to take a full breath.

An ambulance screeched to a stop outside the school in under ten minutes, and after threatening to disembowel the first person who asked him to step away, Sanada was granted passage to the hospital in the back of the ambulance.

“What is your relation to him?” the driver had asked.

Sanada didn’t hesitate with his answer. “He’s everything.”

He robotically rattled off everything he knew about Yukimura’s medical history. His prior diseases, every minor illness he’d had in the past ten years, his weight and height for each of the past five years.

The fact that Yukimura had dropped four kilos since their second year of high school had gone unmarked, but it seemed so obvious now.

Emergency room staff was not as accommodating, relegating him to a sterile waiting room outside the intensive care ward until someone deemed him important enough for an update. It hadn’t taken long for Yukimura’s parents to arrive, and as a longtime companion to her son, Yukimura’s mother pledged to include him in everything the hospital would allow.

After an hour, Sanada was sure he would explode if he stayed put, so he began to pace.

 

♚ ♚ ♚

 

It was nearly nightfall before Yukimura was allowed visitors. Yukimura’s parents went in first so Sanada would have a few minutes alone with him. He almost refused, the idea of nobody being there to keep him from throttling Yukimura for lying to him about his relapse almost frightening. 

Yukimura was barely awake, strapped to tubes and machines of all sorts. A brace cloaked his left wrist, and his face was milky white.

He looked like death.

“Stop thinking whatever it is you’re thinking,” Yukimura panted, lolling his head over to meet Sanada’s gaze. “I’m not going to die.”

“You don’t know that.” Sanada’s anxious fingers flexed on the plastic bars of the hospital bed. “Why didn’t you tell me — tell  _ someone _ — you were feeling different? You’ve been losing weight, and it couldn’t have been the first time you felt the weakness coming on.”

Yukimura closed his eyes and let out a shivering sigh. “I didn’t want to think about it, so I didn’t. I should have, and I’m sorry.” He swatted a limp hand in the direction of Sanada, and Sanada dutifully took Yukimura’s peace offering. “I’m too tired to fight anyway.”

“You can’t stop,” Sanada growled. “Not for a second. I won’t let you, and I’ll fight enough for both of us if I have to.”

A laugh sputtered into a wheeze, but Yukimura managed a smile. “I think that’s my favorite part about you. You don’t give up, even when it’s a good idea.”

“And I never will.” Sanada pressed a kiss to the back of Yukimura’s hand. “I’ll be here when you need me. You never do any other time, but I’ll be here.”

“I know.” Yukimura’s eyes fluttered shut, and the pulse of the oxygen tube pumping oxygen into him was the only sound in the room other than the slow but even beep of the heart monitor clipped to Yukimura’s finger.

And Sanada was there. He ignored school, homework, and his parents’ constant demand that he go back to doing both. None of that mattered. His grades would recover, and if he had anything to say about it, so would Yukimura.

All he could do was wait.

 


End file.
